Blog Exercises: Trackbacks Come Again No More

The power of trackbacks is to track the discussion of articles on your site across the web. They are generated automatically by the post when it is published, sending a trackback response to your site.

When the referring site owner moves their site, makes a domain name change, or does a total makeover that causes the database to be changed or updated, trackbacks can be re-released, flooding your site with redundant trackbacks as if the posts were just published.

While we wait for WordPress and others to add some form of verification to duplicate trackbacks, it’s up to us to be responsible towards these unwanted trackbacks.

Note that the above image of a duplicate, old trackback is dated 2013 and the link in the trackbacking post is dated 2007. If a trackback comes in dated a year ago, possibly three or eight years ago, it is not spam. Don’t mark it as spam. If you permitted the trackback the first time, just delete it as this is a duplicate.

Your blog exercise today is to check for duplicate trackbacks and delete them appropriately, and to be familiar with them in the future when they arrive in your comment queue.
These seems like a fairly simple blog exercise. It could be, but as with all of these blog exercises, this is about stretching your blogging muscles.

Delete the trackback after you visit the referring post.

If you didn’t say thank you before, take a moment to leave a comment or use their contact form (if comments are closed) to say thank you for linking to you, even if the thank you is past due. Remember, you can never say thank you enough.

If you notice they have changed their site, check to see if there is an announcement about the changes and congratulate them.

Look at the duplicate trackback as a change to re-kindle an old relationship or start a new one.